


Transparent Answer

by C107



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Angst, Confused Hinata Hajime, Depression, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Kamukura Izuru Has Feelings, POV Akamatsu Kaede, Panic Attacks, Poor Hajime, Repression, Sad Oma Kokichi, happy heat haze, he didn't ask for this, inspired by kagerou daze, izuru doesn't know what's going on, until she gets kaedead, we love rhyming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 10:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20256550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C107/pseuds/C107
Summary: There were many events that could have followed their argument.Kaede Akamatsu jumping off of the school rooftop that day wasn't one he had considered.





	Transparent Answer

"Let's go over there next!" 

Kaede pointed to the door of a classroom, grinning when Izuru let her pull him along and maneuvering through the sea of students that made up the halls. She had succeeded in convincing him to come to the school festival with her, so she wanted him to have the closest thing to fun that he could. 

"Apparently, the third-best gamer in the country created an STG and is battling against anyone who visits this classroom." Cheekily, "You may have competition, you know."

"...We'll see."

A few seconds later, Kaede released Izuru's wrist and slid the classroom's door open with a smile, giving a small wave to a friendly-looking boy who didn't seem to know that his jacket had not just one, but _two_ sleeves on the way in.

"You're the, um, 'Harumaki' everyone in the hallway has been talking about, right?" She closed the classroom door once Izuru had stepped inside, addressing the long-haired girl that stood in the room's center. 

The girl nodded, not meeting her eyes and playing with a lock of hair that would have been resting against her face. A small frown graced her features, but Kaede had been around a certain someone long enough to figure it must have been her relaxed expression. 

"Only one person at a time, though." Harumaki looked up from the spot on the floor she had been staring at. "So if you wanna go first, your boyfriend will have to wait outside.”

Kaede’s ahoge stood on end.

_‘This again?’_

“He’s not my–” “I will wait outside.”

_'Izuru, do you even know just how much you hurt me when you do things like this?'_

The boy stepped out of the classroom, and Kaede turned to Harumaki with a smile. The girl sat at a desk and picked up her controller, which was shaped like a gun, in response. She said nothing, so Kaede took that as a sign to start the match and grabbed her controller as well.

"Normal, Hard, or Extreme?"

"Uh…" She had never been one for playing video games, but she still wanted to give it her all. "Extreme, I think."

"...Are you sure?"

_'Does she not have faith in me at all?'_

At her nod, Harumaki set the game to its hardest difficulty. The setting of the match was a ruined city, and with faces illuminated by the glow of the artificial red sky, both girls began shooting at the cartoonish aliens that made their way onto the screen. It was an odd choice of enemy, in her opinion. One that didn't fit the rest of the area at all. However, she was grateful for their neon green colors that made them easier to spot.

The match ended predictably.

With her losing and Harumaki winning.

Kaede smiled.

"What's with that dorky look?" Harumaki narrowed her eyes at her, resting her controller on the desk she had been sitting at. 

"The score was pretty close, don't you think?" 

The girl glanced to the side. "You lost by eight-thousand points, but… I guess your hand-eye coordination wasn't bad. You seemed like you were having fun, at least."

With a grin, Kaede lowered her controller. "Thanks, Harumaki." 

"It's actually… Maki Harukawa."

"Oh, I see. I'll keep that in mind!" 

Stepping outside of the classroom, Kaede spotted Izuru sitting by the door, one leg out with the knee of the other pulled to his chest, an arm draped over it.

"You're up, Izuru." 

The boy stood silently, making his way inside of the classroom and not bothering to shut the door behind him.

Just as she had with her, Maki asked which difficulty Izuru would prefer. 

"...Whatever you can keep up with." 

"_What_ was that?"

"Whichever difficulty that will ensure you don't lose too horribly."

_'Oh no.' _

Kaede watched on with pity as Maki's forced friendliness snapped. The girl set the game to its highest difficulty and grabbed her controller, gripping it so tightly that it threatened to break.

"...I won't lose."

The match was an intense one as long as you ignored the almost comical contrast in Maki's focused, yet angered expression and Izuru's incredibly relaxed one. Kaede didn't know who to cheer for, but the aura Maki was emitting was so menacing that she decided not to say anything at all.

Maki lost by two-hundred points.

"How did… When…"

"Your style was incredibly careless, but it at least worked before you became so fixated on the idea of winning that you abandoned all previous tact and simply began shooting at whatever targets appeared in front of you. From there, it was fairly easy to obtain a higher score. How boring."

_'Izuru...stop…'_

"I had no desire to secure the ending prize. Keep it."

With that, he lowered his controller and stood from the desk, making his way out of the classroom.

"Izuru, apologize!"

"Why?" 

Kaede let out a groan.

—

"So…"

The chirps of cicadas carried through the park, and she watched Kokichi dig his shoe into the grass, effectively stopping the swing he was sitting in. The fact that they were the only two in the playground made his voice seem louder to her ears.

"Why'd you call me out here, Kayayday? Boy troubles?" He gave his best little gremlin frown, leaning forward just enough to invade her personal space. If she hadn't been used to his antics, she would have reacted more. "If Izuru rejected your confession, I'll beat him up so hard he'll have to crawl back into the TV!"

"I don't even feel that way about him, Kokichi."

The boy leaned back. "Uh-huh."

"I'm serious." She gripped her swing's old, frayed rope, turning away from him and staring blankly into the colors of the setting sun. "He needs someone unpredictable enough to keep him entertained. Someone smart enough to at least keep up with him. Someone just as selfish but… amazing as he is." 

"What if you think less about what he needs and more about what he wants? Which is obviously you." Kokichi grinned. "Just my take on things, but you know I don't like him anyway. You weren't this insecure before he came around."

Kaede let out a hum.

"You know I didn't call you here to talk about him, Kokichi."

"Yep!" Almost childishly, he popped the 'p' at the end of the word. "It's totally written all over your face. Something serious is bothering you, isn't it?" 

"It's about Mom's death." 

From the corner of her eye, Kaede noticed that all traces of a joking expression were wiped from Kokichi's face. She reached down where she had sat her backpack in the grass and leaned it against the swingset's side, carefully rummaging through it before pulling out the documents she had found.

"These were from Dad's office. Just read them."

She passed the papers to the boy, his shaky hands brushing against her perfectly still ones. Orbs of violet scanned the contents of the documents, and Kaede could almost _see_ the cogs turning in Kokichi's brain. 

"This is…"

"I have… a really stupid plan." She set her eyes on a murder of crows that took shape in the sky. "The outcome will depend on whether or not you're willing to help me."

—

"Kaede Akamatsu."

The trunk of the tree they were sitting under did a fine job of shielding them from the sun's blinding light and unrelenting heat. Birds chirped in the distance, creating what sounded, to her, like a light-hearted song. Izuru held out what had once been a neatly-folded test paper to her, and Kaede clutched at the grass underneath her palms, fighting the urge to shy away from his intense gaze. Her eyes wandered from him, to the test paper, and then back to him. 

"So, um, you see… That's…"

"A fifty-six."

One hand released the grass, Kaede tugging at the collar of her uniform, a nervous chuckle falling from her lips. She leaned away from him, mind racing to come with any sort of plan to get her out of this situation. 

"Don't misunderstand," Izuru continued. "I didn't call you here to discuss your low grade. My point is that this is a product of whatever has been distracting you for the last three days, seven hours, and seven minutes."

He had noticed. 

Naturally.

Kaede's lips curled into a frown. She knew that if she lied, he would see through it right away. Whether or not he would bother calling her out on it was the question. She also knew that someone like him would definitely be able to tell that she was considering lying at the moment. There would be no point in it, so she settled for the truth.

"I've just been worrying about Kokichi, Kyoko, and Makoto, you know?" She folded her arms across her chest, gripping her elbows, "I keep thinking of what it'd be like if they were ever put in any danger and I wasn't there to help them."

Izuru's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and he lowered the hand that held the test. "Why?"

She bit the inside of her cheek. "Is it fine if I don't tell you?"

A pang of guilt shot through her when Izuru quieted, and she fought the urge to tell him everything about the files, the documents, the Haze, and her stupid plan. She knew the boy had been showing concern for her, if in his own way, so dismissing him made her feel as if she were dismissing all of the progress he had been making the past few months.

The silence was tense, too tense for her, so Kaede stood with a shaky smile.

"Uh, let's do something fun!"

"I can see your underwear from this angle."

_"Izuru!"_

—

He didn't understand.

For once in his life, he didn't understand what was happening, and he _didn't like it._

"I won't stand around and let you toss me aside as soon as you get bored!"

He didn't understand where her behavior was coming from. He couldn’t determine what the catalyst for her lashing out at him could have been. Going over their interactions during the day, the week, the year, almost nothing came to mind. A melancholic glance here, a pensive expression there, and all of her behavior over the past few days.

Those were all he had to work with, all of the clues for him to make sense of, but nothing was making sense and the entire experience was illogical and she was walking away and _he was_ _running out of time._

"...Goodbye, Izuru. Thanks for pretending to be friends with me for this long."

—

The red and black cavity that had opened in the sky resembled an abyss, and Kaede stared into it with a sorrowful smile. August fifteenth. The countdown had ended. Kyoko, Makoto, Kokichi, Izuru. They would probably hate her now, wouldn't they?

** _"Kaede!"_ **

A few feet behind her, her name escaped Kokichi's lips in a shout and a sob, and the boy clutched at his arm where it had been dislocated. The cry had been enough to convey all of his emotions, all of his feelings, all of his thoughts to her.

_"We need you...! Please don't go!"_

Also behind her, the Snake of Despairing Eyes in the form of their father laughed and laughed and laughed.

Kaede stood at the edge of the school's rooftop, looking at the ground below before looking back to the haze that clouded the sky. She would have been lying to say it didn't make her feel a little dizzy. She would have been lying to say she wasn't worried at all. Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach, but she turned to Kokichi with one last smile.

"Don't forget about the plan, alright?"

She fell.

—

Voices.

_"Okay, so here's the plan: He joins us, or we threaten to release his nudes to the public."_

_"Kokichi, he doesn't _ ** _have_ ** _ any nude photos of himself."_

_"And that's where you come in, Miss Detective! I'll remove the clothes from his upper body, and you'll remove the ones from his lower half!" An odd snicker. "Sound like a good idea?"_

_"...Grab his legs_–_"_

_"Guys, I think he's waking up!"_

Hajime let out a groan when he came to, peeling his eyes open to the point where they were only half-lidded. He blinked once, twice, scanning the room before realizing he had no idea where he was.

He let out a scream.

In his opinion, it had been an appropriate response to getting kidnapped, but his captors seemed to have thought otherwise. A boy with violet hair that curled at the ends bust into a fit of laughter, and a girl let out an amused sigh, tucking a lock of long, lavender hair behind an ear. Further away from him, a boy with an ahoge similar to his held a hand to his mouth to stifle chuckles that threatened to escape him.

Hajime was incredibly confused, and his confusion only heightened when they told him that they were a secret organization.

—

He sat at the kitchen table, Kyoko having left to go to bed.

To him, the members of DICE didn't seem to be bad people. They all had their fair share of quirks that they teased one another about, but that was what friends did, wasn't it? They looked after one another just as a family would, and they had no problem extending that kindness to him, Mahiru, and Harumaki. Even a few moments ago, when Kyoko had inquired about why he hadn't gone to bed yet before making him a cup of hot chocolate.

They were nice.

For the first time in eighteen years, he had friends.

Grinning like an idiot, he chugged down the last of his drink and stood from the table to clean his cup, making sure to push in his chair. Walking over to the sink, he heard the sound of someone walking down the stairs and turned to see Mahiru rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. The girl let out a yawn, making her way to the pantry presumably to grab a snack.

"Oh. What's up, Big Bro? Why're you still awake?" She put a hand on her hip and narrowed her eyes. "You _do_ know mom would get mad at you for that if she were here, right?"

"...Mahiru doesn't call me 'Big Bro,' Kokichi."

The girl stared blankly at him before she was replaced with a giggling Kokichi. The boy's eyes glowed a bright red, brighter than Hajime had ever seen them, and he put his hands behind his head.

"Neeheehee! Wow...!" He exclaimed in feigned amazement. "You're more perceptive than I give you credit for, Hajime. And here I thought I had fooled you this time..."

It wasn't that he disliked Kokichi. He just considered his company less preferable than anyone else's.

Hajime narrowed his eyes. "Why were you gone for so long? Did something happen?"

"Ah, ah, ah..." The long-haired boy drawled, his tone a mixture of a teasing one and one devoid of feeling. "I'll be the one asking questions here. And the question is..."

Red, red, red.

So bright that it burned his eyes, so intense that it made him flinch away.

"Izuru, are you forgetting about me?"

She stood in all her glory, still dressed in the school uniform from two years ago. The same golden blond hair, the same warm smile, the same comforting voice with that patient tone that hadn't changed in all the time they had been apart.

Something was wrong.

His head hurt. It pounded more and more, tens upon hundreds of repressed memories threatening to resurface. He backed away from her, but she just kept moving closer and closer until his back met the kitchen counter and she was _too close and he couldn't do anything about it._ Slender, delicate fingers intertwined with his, and her touch felt too real, too warm, too_ alive._ But she was dead, and he knew that, knew that better than anyone else just like he had known _her_ better than anyone else.

Red.

Too intense, too burning, too frightening.

Not like her at all.

He tried to use that fact to ground himself, tried to steady his breathing and his heartbeat because he _knew_ her. He knew that her eyes were, knew that her eyes had been...

What color had they been, exactly?

Kaede had somehow gotten closer to him, and his breath caught in his throat. He shut his eyes tight so he could think, think, think and raised his free hand to clutch at long locks of brown hair that _weren't there anymore because he had cut them off two years ago on August sixteenth at 5:53 PM, the day right after she had_–

She planted a kiss on his cheek, smiling up at him.

"Rest well, Izuru."

**Author's Note:**

> it's hajiru himukura, back at it again with the identity crisis. thanks for that, kokichi. happy heat haze. avoid cats, trucks, stairs, metal beams and the like. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed this!
> 
> Just a tip:  
Kaede = Ayano  
Izuru = Shintaro  
Maki = Takane  
Kaito (he was mentioned) = Haruka  
Kokichi = Kano  
Kyoko = Kido  
Makoto = Seto  
Mahiru = Momo
> 
> the parents are chisa and kyosuke. i actually made an entire list that's way longer than this one, but y'know--


End file.
